“Well, I certainly have got
a better opinion of country people than I ever used
to have, Bessie,” said Dolly Ransom. “After
the way those people in Hedgeville treated you and
Zara, I’d made up my mind that they were a nasty
lot, and I was glad I’d always lived in the city.”

“Well, aren’t you still
glad of it, Dolly? I really do think you’re
better off in the city. There wouldn’t be
enough excitement about living in the country for
you, I’m afraid.”

“Of course there wouldn’t!
But I think maybe I was sort of unfair to all country
people because the crowd at Hedgeville was so mean
to you. And I like the country well enough, for
a little while. I couldn’t bear living
there all the time, though. I think that would
drive me wild.”

“The trouble was that Zara and
I didn’t exactly belong, Dolly. They thought
her father was doing something wrong because he was
a foreigner and they couldn’t understand his
ways.”

“I suppose he didn’t like them much, either,
Bessie.”

“He didn’t. He thought
they were stupid. And, of course, in a way, they
were. But not as stupid as he thought they were.
He was used to entirely different things, and-oh,
well, I suppose in some places what he did wouldn’t
have been talked about, even.

“But in the country everyone
knows the business of everyone else, and when there
is a mystery no one is happy until it’s solved.
That’s why Zara and her father got themselves
so disliked. There was a mystery about them,
and the people in Hedgeville just made up their minds
that something was wrong.”

“I feel awfully sorry for Zara,
Bessie. It must be dreadful for her to know that
her father is in prison, and that they are saying that
he was making bad money. You don’t think
he did, do you?”

“I certainly do not! There’s
something very strange about that whole business,
and Miss Eleanor’s cousin, the lawyer, Mr. Jamieson,
thinks so too. You know that Mr. Holmes is mighty
interested in Zara and her father.”

“He tried to help to get Zara
back to that Farmer Weeks who would have been her
guardian if she hadn’t come to join the Camp
Fire, didn’t he?”

“Yes. You see, in the state
where Hedgeville is, Farmer Weeks is her legal guardian,
and he could make her work for him until she was twenty-one.
He’s an old miser, and as mean as he can be.
But once she is out of that state, he can’t
touch her, and Mr. Jamieson has had Miss Eleanor appointed
her guardian, and mine too, for that state. The
state where Miss Eleanor and all of us live, I mean.”

“Well, Mr. Holmes is trying
to get hold of you, too, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he is. You ought
to know, Dolly, after the way he tried to get us both
to go off with him in his automobile that day, and
the way he set those gypsies on to kidnapping us.
And that’s the strangest thing of all.”

“Perhaps he wants to know something
about Zara, and thinks you can tell him, or perhaps
he’s afraid you’ll tell someone else something
he doesn’t want them to know.”

“Yes, it may be that. But
that lawyer of his, Isaac Brack, who is so mean and
crooked that no one in the city will have anything
to do with him except the criminals, Mr. Jamieson
says, told me once that unless I went with him I’d
never find out the truth about my father and mother
and what became of them.”

“Oh, Bessie, how exciting!
You never told me that before. Have you told
Mr. Jamieson?”

“Yes, and he just looked at
me queerly, and said nothing more about it.”

“Bessie, do you know what I think?”

“No. I’m not a mind reader, Dolly!”

“Well, I believe Mr. Jamieson
knows more than he has told you yet, or that he guesses
something, anyway. And he won’t tell you
what it is because he’s afraid he may be wrong,
and doesn’t want to raise your hopes unless
he’s sure that you won’t be disappointed.”

“I think that would be just
like him, Dolly. He’s been awfully good
to me. I suppose it’s because he thinks
it will please Miss Eleanor, and he knows that she
likes us, and wants to do things for us.”

“Oh, I know he likes you, too,
Bessie. He certainly ought to, after the way
you brought him help back there in Hamilton, when we
were there for the trial of those gypsies who kidnapped
us. If it hadn’t been for you, there’s
no telling what that thief might have done to him.”

“Oh, anyone would have done
the same thing, Dolly. It was for my sake that
he was in trouble, and when I had a chance to help
him, it was certainly the least that I could do.
Don’t you think so?”

“Well, maybe that’s so,
but there aren’t many girls who would have known
how to do what you did or who would have had the pluck
to do it, even if they did. I’m quite sure
I wouldn’t, and yet I’d have wanted to,
just as much as anyone.”

“I wish I did know something
about my father and mother, Dolly. You’ve
no idea how much that worries me. Sometimes I
feel as if I never would find out anything.”

“Oh, you mustn’t get discouraged,
Bessie. Try to be as cheerful as you are when
it’s someone else who is in trouble. You’re
the best little cheerer-up I know when I feel blue.”

“Oh, Dolly, I do try to be cheerful,
but it’s such a long time since they left me
with the Hoovers!”

“Well, there must be some perfectly
good reason for it all, Bessie, I feel perfectly sure
of that. They would never have gone off that way
unless they had to.”

“Oh, it isn’t that that
bothers me. It’s feeling that unless something
dreadful had happened to them, I’d have heard
of them long ago. And then, Maw Hoover and Jake
Hoover were always picking at me about them.
When I did something Maw Hoover didn’t like,
she’d say she didn’t wonder, that she
couldn’t expect me to be any good, being the
child of parents who’d gone off and left me
on her hands that way.”

“That’s all right for
her to talk that way, but she didn’t have you
on her hands. She made you work like a slave,
and never paid you for it at all. You certainly
earned whatever they spent for keeping you, Miss Eleanor
says so, and I’ll take her word any time against
Maw Hoover or anyone else.”

“I’ve sometimes thought
it was pretty mean for me to run off the way I did,
Dolly. If it hadn’t been for Zara, I don’t
believe I’d have done it.”

“It’s a good thing for
Zara that you did. Poor Zara! They’d
taken her father to jail, and she was going to have
to stay with Farmer Weeks. She’d never
have been able to get along without you, you know.”

“Well, that’s one thing
that makes me feel that perhaps it was right for me
to go, Dolly. That, and the way Miss Eleanor spoke
of it. She seemed to think it was the right thing
for me to do, and she knows better than I do, I’m
sure.”

“Certainly she does. And
look here, Bessie! It’s all coming out right,
sometime, I know. I’m just sure of that!
You’ll find out all about your father and mother,
and you’ll see that there was some good reason
for their not turning up before.”

“Oh, Dolly dear, I’m sure
of that now! And it’s just that that makes
me feel so bad, sometimes. If something dreadful
hadn’t happened to them, they would have come
for me long ago. At least they would have kept
on sending the money for my board.”

“How do you know they didn’t,
Bessie? Didn’t Maw Hoover get most of the
letters on the farm?”

“Yes, she did, Dolly. Paw
Hoover couldn’t read, so they all went to her,
no matter to whom they were addressed.”

“Why, then,” said Dolly,
triumphantly, “maybe your father and mother
were writing and sending the money all the time!”

“But wouldn’t she have told me so, Dolly?”

“Suppose she just kept the money,
and pretended she never got it at all, Bessie?
I’ve heard of people doing even worse things
than that when they wanted money. It’s
possible, isn’t it, now? Come on, own up!”

“I suppose it is,” said
Bessie, doubtfully. “Only it doesn’t
seem very probable. Maw Hoover was pretty mean
to me, but I don’t think she’d ever have
done anything like that.”

“Well, I wouldn’t put
it above her! She treated you badly enough about
other things, heaven knows!”

“I’d hate to think she
had done anything quite as mean as that, though, Dolly.
I do think she had a pretty hard time herself, and
I’m quite sure that if it hadn’t been
for Jake she wouldn’t have been so mean to me.”

“Oh, I know just the sort he
is. I’ve seen him, remember, Bessie!
He’s a regular spoiled mother’s boy.
I don’t know why it is, but the boys whose mothers
coddle them and act as if they were the best boys on
earth always seem to be the meanest.”

“Yes, you did see him, Dolly.
Still, Jake’s very young, and he wouldn’t
be so bad, either, if he’d been punished for
the things he did at home. As long as I was there,
you see, they could blame everything that was done
onto me. He did, at least, and Maw believed him.”

“Didn’t his father ever
see what a worthless scamp he was?”

“Oh, how could he, Dolly?
He was his own son, you see, and then there was Maw
Hoover. She wouldn’t let him believe anything
against Jake, any more than she would believe it herself.”

“I’m sorry for Paw Hoover,
Bessie. He seemed like a very nice old man.”

“He certainly was. Do you
remember how he found me with you girls the day after
Zara and I ran away? He could have told them where
we were then, but he didn’t do it. Instead
of that, he was mighty nice to me, and he gave me
ten dollars.”

“He said you’d earned
it, Bessie, and he was certainly right about that.
Why, in the city they can’t get servants to do
all the things you did, even when they’re well
paid, and you never were paid at all!”

“Well, that doesn’t make
what he did any the less nice of him, Dolly.
And I’ll be grateful to him, because he might
have made an awful lot of trouble.”

“Oh, I’ll always like
him for that, too. And I guess from what I saw
of him, and all I’ve heard about his wife, that
he doesn’t have a very happy time at home, either.
Maw Hoover must make him do just about what she wants,
whether he thinks she’s right or not.”

“Well, I suppose the point is
that there really must be more people like him in
the country than like his wife and Farmer Weeks.
These people around here are certainly being as nice
as they can be to the poor Pratts. Just think
of their coming here to-morrow to build a new house
for them!”

“There are more nice, good-hearted
people than bad ones all over, Dolly. That’s
true of every place, city or country.”

“But it seems to me we always
hear more of the bad ones, and those who do nasty
things, than we do of the others, in the newspapers.”

“I think that’s because
the things that the bad people do are more likely
to be exciting and interesting, Dolly. You see,
when people do nice things, it’s just taken
as a matter of course, because that’s what they
ought to do. And when they do something wicked,
it gets everyone excited and makes a lot of talk.
That’s the reason for that.”

“Still, this work that the men
from Cranford are going to do for the Pratts is interesting,
Bessie. I think a whole lot of people would like
to know about that, if there was any way of telling
them.”

“Yes, that’s so.
This isn’t an ordinary case, by any means.
And I guess you’ll find that we’ll do
plenty of talking about it. Miss Eleanor will,
I know, because she thinks they ought to get credit
for doing it.”

“So will Mrs. Pratt and the
children, too. Oh, yes, I was wrong about it,
Bessie. Lots of people will know about this, because
the Pratts will always have the house to remind them
of it, and people who go by, if they’ve heard
of it, will remember the story when they see the place.
I do wonder what sort of a house they will put up?”

“It’ll have to be very
plain, of course. And it will look rough at first,
because it won’t be painted, and there won’t
be any plaster on the ceilings and there won’t
be any wall paper, either.”

“Oh, but that will be easy to
fix later. They’ll have a comfortable house
for the winter, anyhow, I’m sure. And if
they can make as much money out of selling butter
and eggs as Miss Eleanor thinks, they’ll soon
be able to pay to have it fixed up nicely.”

“Dolly, I believe we’ll
be able to help, too. If those girls at Camp
Halsted could go around and get so many orders just
in an hour or so, why shouldn’t we be able to
do a lot of it when we get back to the city?”

“Why, that’s so, Bessie!
I hadn’t thought of that. My aunt would
buy her butter and eggs there, I know. She’s
always saying that she can’t get really fresh
eggs in the city. And they are delicious.
That was one of the things I liked best at Miss Eleanor’s
farm. The eggs there were delicious; not a bit
like the musty ones we get at home, no matter how
much we pay for them.”

“I think it’s time we
were going to bed ourselves, Dolly. This is going
to be like camping out, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and we’ll be just
as comfortable as we would be in tents, too. The
Boy Scouts use these lean-tos very often when
they are in the woods, you know. They just build
them up against the side of a tree.”

“I never saw one before, but
they certainly are splendid, and they’re awfully
easy to make.”

“We’ll have to get up
very early in the morning, Bessie. I heard Miss
Eleanor say so. So I guess it’s a good idea
to go to bed, just as you say.”

“Yes. The others are all
going. We certainly are going to have a busy
day to-morrow.”

“I don’t see that we can
do much, Bessie. I know I wouldn’t be any
good at building a house. I’d be more trouble
than help, I’m afraid.”

“That’s all you know about
it! There are ever so many things we can do.”

“What, for instance?”

“Well, we’ll have to get
the meals for the men, and you haven’t any idea
what a lot of men can eat when they’re working
hard! They have appetites just like wolves.”

“Well, I’ll certainly
do my best to see that they get enough. They’ll
have earned it. What else?”

“They’ll want people to
hand them their tools, and run little errands for
them. And if the weather is very hot, they’ll
be terribly thirsty, too, and we’ll be able
to keep busy seeing that they have plenty of cooling
drinks. Oh, we’ll be busy, all right!
Come on, let’s go to bed.”

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